If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Table Talk (published1835), entry for18 Dec.

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show Of touch or marble, nor canst boast a row Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold; Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told, Or stair, or courts; but standst an ancient pile, And these grudged at, art reverenced the while.

-Jonson, Ben
  The Forest,'To Penshurst'.

Hang a lantern on your problem.

-Matthews, ChristopherJ
   Advice to political candidates to expose their personal frailties before they can be discovered by the media. In the New York Times,10  Jul.

   I shall never be persuaded that God hath shut up all light of learning within the lantern of Aristotle's brain.

-Raleigh, Sir Walter
  The History of theWorld.

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by; Foreverynight attea-timeand before youtakeyourseat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  A Child's Garden ofVerses, no.30,'The Lamplighter', stanza1.